Hello and welcome to your meditation.
Take a moment at the beginning of this meditation to find a comfortable position.
You can either find a seated position or a lying down position.
Just taking a moment to ask yourself what would feel most supportive for you right now.
If you're feeling especially restless it might feel nice to lie down on the floor.
Or if you're feeling particularly sleepy maybe it feels supportive to find a seated position.
If you're seated you might find some elevation to the hips,
Either sitting in a chair or sitting on a blanket or a block.
Letting your spine be nice and long,
Your shoulders relaxed,
Your hands on your thighs or in your lap.
And if you're lying down I invite you to bring your arms out to the sides with your palms facing up.
Let your feet fall to the sides.
And then when you feel ready you can either let your gaze rest upon a point out in front of you,
Letting the gaze soften,
Or you can close your eyes.
And just give yourself a moment to arrive here,
To settle in.
This might mean giving yourself a moment just to check in with your energy right now.
Noticing if you feel especially amped up,
Restless,
Maybe it feels hard to focus.
Or maybe you just feel tired,
Maybe a little checked out.
And noticing if there's any sensations in the body that help you to know that this is how you're feeling.
And we'll spend the first half of this meditation just giving yourself some space to breathe deeply,
To communicate with the nervous system that it's okay to relax,
That our work for the day is done.
So as we begin you might find it supportive to place a hand on your belly.
And we'll begin by taking a deep inhale through the nose,
And a slow exhale through pursed lips as if you're blowing through a straw.
Again a deep inhale,
And a slow exhale through pursed lips.
And continue doing this with your own breath,
Your own rhythm.
And with each inhale see if you can focus on filling the lower belly.
And as you exhale focus on contracting the lower belly as you blow the air out.
And with each round of breath see if you can let your inhales and your exhales become a little deeper.
But also be aware if it feels like you're taking in too much breath,
If this is making it more difficult to relax.
See if you can shorten the inhale and exhale just slightly.
And if it's helpful for you to count,
You might count the inhale to five or six,
And then count your exhale one beat longer to six or seven.
And just letting your pace be whatever feels right for you.
And if counting doesn't feel supportive,
You can just let go of the counting and just let your inhales be deep,
And your exhales to be just a little deeper.
With each exhale see if you can invite your body to soften just a little more.
Let yourself sink into the floor below you,
Feeling the support here.
All the activity of the day can shake up our energy and shake up our thoughts,
Kind of like a snow globe being shaken.
And when we give ourselves this space to take deep breaths,
It's like we're putting down the snow globe and allowing all the snowflakes to fall to the bottom,
Letting everything settle.
And just staying with these deep breaths for a couple more moments.
And now I invite you to let go of control of the breath and just let the breath return to its natural rhythm,
Trusting that it knows how to breathe on its own.
Now I invite you to do a brief scan of the body,
Just noticing if there's any obvious areas of tension that feel ready to release,
To relax,
To let go.
You might bring your awareness to the brow,
Relaxing your forehead,
Softening the skin around your eyes.
And now loosen the jaw,
And relax the tongue all the way down to the root.
And soften the shoulders,
Letting them melt down the spine.
And giving any tension here over to gravity.
And now noticing your seat,
Maybe noticing the pressure of the floor or the seat against your buttocks.
And now noticing the hands and really sensing into the feelings of aliveness in the hands,
Maybe tuning into their temperature,
Maybe sensations of tingling or vibrating,
And letting there be a softness in the hands.
And now bringing your awareness into the feet,
Noticing the feeling of your heels or the bottoms of your feet against the floor.
And just letting the feet be full of your awareness.
And letting this awareness bring a sense of groundedness into the body as you feel into the points of contact with the earth below you.
And now let your awareness be with the breath,
And just sensing into whatever area in your body you most easily sense the breath.
This might be the rise and fall of the stomach or the chest,
Or maybe you can feel the breath as it flows in and out of the nostrils or grazes the top of your lip.
And just see if you can rest your awareness here.
And if you notice yourself trying to control the breath,
Or maybe it doesn't feel comfortable to be with the breath right now,
You can always rest your awareness in a part of the body,
Maybe the hands or the feet or your seat.
And wherever you decide to rest your awareness,
See if you can just let it be a place of refuge,
A place of calm and safety,
Just knowing that this time is for you to just rest and just to be.
And naturally you'll notice the mind will wander,
It'll get lost in thought,
Especially after the end of a day's work.
And just notice that the mind has wandered and then gently bring it back,
And just gently bring it back to the breath or the place in your body where you've rested your attention.
Sometimes we have to do this over and over and over again,
And that's okay.
It's just the practice of meditation,
The practice of refocusing our attention on the things that are more stable and more true.
Thoughts are like bubbles just pouring out of a bubble machine,
And they come out and they pop and then they're gone.
But the breath and the sensations in the body,
They stay with us,
They ground us.
And as we transition out of this practice,
I invite you to take a deep breath,
Filling your lungs,
And then exhale out the mouth,
Maybe letting out a sigh.
Maybe you bring some movement into the wrists or the ankles,
Maybe stretching your arms overhead,
And taking a moment to notice how you feel now at the end of this practice.
Thanks for practicing.
